


Arche

by greygerbil



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: First Time Together, First time with a man, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:41:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24524785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Two times Alexios meets Brasidas after Korinth, one accidental and one less so.
Relationships: Alexios/Brasidas (Assassin's Creed)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 148
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	Arche

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



“You have done Korinth a service. Anthousa means well, but she was wrong in this.”

Brasidas clapped Alexios on the shoulder before he took a gulp of his drink. The last waning rays of sunshine fell on them over the slanted rooftop of the tavern. Alexios smelled the resin of the fresh-cut wood of the bench, the sweet aroma of the wine in his earthen cup. It was coincidence that he had run into Brasidas on his way out of Korinth and they had decided to stop here, at the side of the road, where meadows and wheat fields stretched around a small cluster of houses, too few to call them a village. Brasidas’ golden armour shimmered in the corner of his eyes, his long legs stretched out before him, arms crossed over his chest, tanned muscle covered in soft, dark hair.

In truth, Alexios did not really know enough about Korinth to say for certain how people would have reacted to the Monger’s end one way or another. Anthousa’s plan had appealed to the side of him that delighted in the thrill of battle and blood a little too much to call himself a good man, but Brasidas had spoken to the person he hoped to be, and Alexios had decided to follow his lead and with that his head instead of his base instincts that would have enjoyed a spectacle.

“It looked to me like the Monger had done enough damage in Korinth. No need to cause more unrest.” He grinned at Brasidas. “I have to say, though, I did not expect a Spartan to caution against public bloodshed when a heterae was pushing me towards it. Maybe I have been gone too long if things have changed so much?”

Brasidas laughed.

“No, Sparta’s not so different now that we don’t enjoy a fight,” he said. “But working as a spy has given me a unique perspective. Most Spartan warriors go from the _agoge_ into the hoplite lines, first being asked to prove themselves to their comrades in training, and then having to defend their friends’ lifes shoulder to shoulder on the battlefield. It makes for worthy men, but I think many could benefit from other experiences.” He cocked his head. “So, you can see, since I think Spartans should know a little more than just what our elders think is proper, then if you return to the city, we would have won much.”

Alexios glanced into his cup of wine. Did he want to go back to Sparta? There was the complication of Nikolaos – he had let him go, but the last anyone had known of him was that he had called Alexios to a private conversation and then vanished. At the very least Stentor, who had been so shocked he was excluded, would remember this moment very well and be eager to point Alexios out in a crowd. Brasidas had told him Nikolaos had been proclaimed dead even without a body found. With the Spartans spread out all over the world in their own battles now, the details of Nikolaos’ disappearance had probably not reached far-flung spies like Brasidas, or perhaps even the majority of people, but eventually they would come back to haunt him. Besides, without his mother and his sister, a return would feel hollow.

And yet something twisted in his chest as Brasidas put the idea between them. Would it be possible for him to go back? Maybe bring his family home, whatever was left of them? If he really managed to track down Myrrine and save Kassandra from herself, then finding Nikolaos again would probably seem a small feat in comparison. Once his father was back, he had a feeling Stentor would be easier to handle, too. He barked like a guard dog and fought like a war hound, but he’d acted the puppy at their father’s heels.

“A Spartan mercenary, eh?” he said. “That would certainly be a new one. The only ones I’ve ever met had been kicked out. They’d tell you they went of their own accord, of course.”

Brasidas chuckled. “I imagine they would. But your story is singular. You’re not a man who turned his back on his country for gold or was forced to leave because of a crime he committed.”

“That’s debatable. I may have been young, but I didn’t just flaunt the laws of Sparta, I offended the gods. Doesn’t that worry you?” Alexios asked, lowering his cup. “You’re old enough to remember why I was thrown off Taygetos.”

“If you lived a fall like that, then the gods made it so,” Brasidas said with conviction, placing his drink down on the bench beside him to knock his own armoured chest with his fist. “I would not presume to doubt an oracle without good reason, but the truth is we all know they have not always been right. In the end, the only way our destiny truly reveals itself to humans is when it unfolds before us.”

Brasidas talked sense, so much so that Alexios was almost tempted to reveal the whole treachery of the oracle to proof to him how right he really was. It seemed like every word from Brasidas just strengthened that connection Alexios had felt when he had first locked eyes with him in the burning warehouse, with the heat of angry flames creeping up under his armour, when Brasidas and him fought alongside each other, their movements fitting together as easy as those of practiced dancers. It would have been mad to actually do it, of course. His feelings here or there, he could not yet say if Brasidas wasn’t himself a plant of the same Cult trying to nudge Alexios to trust him. Alexios sealed his own lips with more wine. When he had flushed the words back down his throat, he turned to him with a smile that was open, not weighed down with the faint, painful hopes that sat sideways in his chest.

“Well, I’ll think about it. I might need a real Spartan to put in a good for word for me if I set foot back there, though. He’ll need to be clever, too. Not everyone there will be as understanding as you.”

He had meant it as a joke, but Brasidas simply nodded his head

“The kings will want more than my acknowledgement, I’ll wager,” he said. “But it’s not impossible to gain their favour and they aren’t unreasonable men. If you come back to Sparta with good intentions, then I am certain we’ll make a citizen out of you yet.”

“I thought every Spartan had to go through the _agoge_? I’m a bit old for that now.”

Brasidas chuckled. “True,” he said. “I doubt you would feel challenged in battle with boys. Maybe there are other ways to educate you as a true Spartan yet, though. I’m sure many men would turn a blind eye to your age if you agreed to be their _eromenos_.”

Alexios had to laugh. With the broad build of a warrior and the muscles and scars to match, he was the furthest from the ideal of the lithe youth that was usually imagined in that spot and he had been since he was fourteen, growing into his frame and beard quite young.

“They’d have to turn a blind eye to a lot more than just the years.”

“Many would be willing if they could have you for it,” Brasidas claimed. “Though I admit it would be a shame to simply ignore so much of what makes you tempting.”

For lack of a come-back and to hide his surprise, Alexios looked into his cup, turning it in his hand. Most men weren’t quite that forward when still mostly sober and out even in fading daylight, and the ones who were had always intrigued Alexios a lot more than those who made unsteady passes at him in the back corner of a tavern. Even when he directed his gaze back at Brasidas’ face, there was only pleasant expectation there playing on a friendly smile. Brasidas was ready for a rejection if it came, Alexios thought, and he doubted it would change their rapport. However, he had also thrown open the door to a different path.

He should have stopped it there. His dalliances with men had all been delegated to his fantasies so far and perhaps that was easiest, especially since he was happy to indulge with women. Kephallonia was too small a place to get a reputation and what desire he had for his own sex was reserved for men, not boys, who would have been a more acceptable choice in the eyes of many.

_But I’m not on Kephallonia anymore._

Sometimes he still forgot, tied to the mind-set of one who had spent most of his young years confined to a space that he had soon grown too hungry for. If he flirted with a Spartan man out here, in a place without a name, among people who would never know or care who he was, what would it matter? His comments wouldn’t be snickered back to him the next time he went to the market.

He took a deep breath of the warm summer air that was driven into his face by a quick wind, suddenly conscious of his freedom. With all the trouble he had run into the moment he had set food out of the borders of his old home, he forgot to appreciate sometimes what good had come to him as well. A man like Brasidas wouldn’t have washed up on Kephallonian shores, either...

“I see what you are saying,” he noted, casually. “I guess I’ll have to find a man who doesn’t need to pretend I’m ten years younger to dare to approach me. There must be some like that in Sparta, right? They call you a brave people.”

Brasidas grinned, stroking his beard as if he had to contemplate the idea.

“I have met a few,” he said.

“Then I should make my way to Sparta eventually.”

“Maybe you don’t have to travel that far quite yet. Sparta is a long way from here.”

Brasidas’ brashness was as seductive in words as it had been in actions. Without thinking, Alexios jumped in, just as he had done in the warehouse.

“Are you offering a taste for the road?” he asked.

“It might be a good way to convince you to return to your old home, no? I’d be doing both you and my city a service,” Brasidas joked. 

“How selfless of you.”

“That’s the heart of a good Spartan soldier. Community before self.”

Brasidas leaned his elbows on the back of the bench, allowing a pause. Alexios felt that if he wanted to stop here, it would have been his time to get up. He didn’t know how old Brasidas was – ten years more than him, fifteen? Evidently he’d left behind the nervous impatience that Alexios still felt looking at him as he stumbled headfirst and blindly along the way Brasidas led. Then again, perhaps Brasidas simply knew how to tell when a man was in his net and he just had to watch him flounder before he could reel him in. 

Alexios would have been insulted, but he couldn’t pretend Brasidas was wrong.

Overhead, the sun was slowly sinking behind the wooded hills, the sky growing blue, turquoise, purple, the brightest stars already shining. It would be warm enough to sit out here all night, but Alexios knew the innkeep would eventually want to close up.

“Community, yes? Does that mean you are going to find the company of other true Spartans tonight? Or can I keep your attention for a bit longer?” Alexios asked.

“I doubt you’ve often had people saying no to that.”

“Sweet words for a warrior! You’ve known me less than a day, all told,” Alexios answered grinning.

Brasidas laughed.

“Do you know how long we’ve tried to take down the Monger? Besides, you have survived the judgement of the gods. I already know you’re a special man,” he said as he glanced over at the tavern. “Should I get you another drink or should we take our leave?”

“I’ve had enough for now.”

Alexios finished his drink in a gulp and saw the corner of Brasidas’ mouth twitch. Was he too eager? But Brasidas just stood and offered him his hand, grasping it harder and longer than he had to when he pulled Alexios to his feet.

They led their horses on the thin paths among the corn fields away from the settlement and towards the light forest. Alexios figured there may have been a room in the tavern or elsewise in another house to rent for the night, but he preferred the safety of the open space, where he could see what came at him from all directions, and it seemed this was one more thing that Brasidas and him agreed on without the need to speak of it. They could do as they wanted with only the cheerfully uncaring ears of the forest listening in and the eyes of owls watching from the trees. Even should Brasidas himself become a danger to Alexios against all his instincts told him, it would be easier to dispatch him out here without causing a scene. Alexios wondered if Brasidas had had the same thought about him.

“Do you travel on your own?” Brasidas asked, brushing a low-hanging branch out of his face.

“Not always,” Alexios said vaguely. Herodotos and Barnabas were waiting for him in the port with his ship and crew, after all. “Mostly, though. I don’t think it’s entirely safe to be around me. I’m a _misthios_ – enough people want me dead.”

It was not the full truth, but it sounded sensible enough and Brasidas gave a nod.

“Then I hope you enjoy the company for tonight.” He waved at him. “Come. I’ve spent more time in Korinth than I wanted to and have gotten to know the surrounding lands. If I can show its beauties to you, I may not have wasted my time wandering here entirely.”

Through a thick tangle of hard-leaved bushes, Brasidas led him onwards down a hill. At the bottom was a clearing bordered on one side by steep stone and on the other by the woods. A small brook splattered out of a round, low cave entrance in the wall and wound away between the trees as a glittering band jumping over stones. Crowded in the shadows as it was, Alexios only noticed the wooden shrine after a moment. A small stone statue stood under its moss-grown roof.

“What’s this?”

“A place of worship. I’m not sure who built it and I don’t think anyone living here uses it anymore.”

After tying his horse to a tree, Brasidas stepped up to the shrine. Alexios did likewise, running his gaze over the statue. The weather had washed off all colour, leaving her a blank grey except for some faded traces of white on her robes, but in her hands she still held a spindle and her blank gaze rested sternly on the two of them. At her feet, faded letters were scratched into the stone.

“ _Ana_.. Ananke, right?” he asked.

“The old mistress of fate.” Brasidas chuckled. “I’m not perhaps as pious as many of the men I know at home, but I found her first thing when I came to Korinth and I always figured I was meant to win here or lose my life if I didn’t. But I’m no augur. Who knows? Perhaps her appearance only told me that I would meet someone whose life was much more sternly directed by her than mine. That’s what I thought when you told me who you were, anyway.”

Alexios smiled. The idea was appealing that perhaps he had slipped away from the machinations of hostile deities to be pulled from the brink of death by a goddess older than Zeus himself. “I hear even the gods fear her.”

“For good reason, too.”

Brasidas touched the feet of the statue like a wordless prayer before he sat down in the grass. Alexios followed his example once more. In the shade of stone and trees, it was growing darker, but a round, bright moon was in the sky. They remained in comfortable silence for a moment and even though Alexios knew they had come here away from prying eyes for a purpose, he was content to let Brasidas lead the pace. Alexios took off his sandals and stuck his feet in the gurgling water.

“It has been a while since I’ve sat like this. Usually by the time I make my rest for the day, I’m tired enough to fall over,” he said.

“Really? You never take a moment?”

“No point in sitting around by myself.”

“What about quiet contemplation?” Brasidas said with a teasing edge to his voice.

Alexios laughed. “Not my style, no.”

“I had a feeling.”

“I don’t think you mind. You could have found yourself a philosopher if you really wanted.”

“Indeed.”

Again there was silence, but this one swallowed the noise of the leaves and the brook and filled the air with the electric shiver of an oncoming storm. Alexios held Brasidas’ gaze, heart beating too fast, but before he could ruin the moment with a jest Brasidas leaned forward and pressed their mouths together.

For a moment, Alexios was focused on the differences: he’d never felt a beard soft against his face when kissing before, nor hands as calloused and broad as his own grabbing at him so intimately. However, they melted away in moments, much faster than he had always imagined it would go, and familiar want came over him as he moved, pulling his feet out of the water to turn fully towards Brasidas.

He kissed well and before he knew it Brasidas’ tongue was in his mouth, insistent more than pushy, gentle with just enough pressure to leave Alexios wanting more. His hands bracketed his face and he tipped Alexios’ head back and Alexios did not even think to fight it. Brasidas’ hands tangled in his long strands.

“I suppose I won’t be teaching you about the value of quiet thoughts tonight,” Brasidas said, as he separated, grinning and licking his lips.

“It would be wasted on me. Let’s do something more useful,” Alexios decided, and because he was just a little shocked how easily Brasidas had made him melt into his touch, he pounced, taking him down into the high grass.

Brasidas huffed as his back hit the soft earth, but smiled still, grasping Alexios’ arms that pressed him down, caressing them rather than shoving him off. Lowering his head, Alexios attacked his neck. He had imagined sleeping with men before and certainly he had wrestled in the dust in friendly competition, so the feeling of a male body against his own was nothing new, but this was the first time one was offered to him. He had not imagined that someone like Brasidas would be the sort who finally made him trip over the line he had nervously drawn in the sand as a youth; Alexios had always figured he’d eventually be the one to pick out a man he’d never see again on his travels and who wouldn’t make him tempted to seek him out after their tryst. This was perfect though, and he breathed out hard as Brasidas slid his hand up Alexios’ thigh, squeezing the muscle, before he grabbed his ass without any timidity.

He was obviously not Brasidas’ first man.

Brasidas’ armour was in the way, but out here in the wilderness Alexios didn’t want to remove it when bears, wolves, or other mercenaries might step out of the trees at any moment. Maybe one day, when he had a home, a place that belonged only to himself, he would be able to take a lover there and make them strip for him and let it last, but this was fine for now. It was a good thing that Brasidas looked as handsome as a statue in his armour, too, even if Alexios was greedy to see what laid underneath.

Since metal hid Brasidas’ torso, Alexios moved downwards to the next logical place, the legs that armour left so conveniently available for touch. However, as his hands caressed Brasidas’ thighs, he realised that what Brasidas probably expected was getting head, or Alexios pleasing him with his hands, or any number of things that Alexios had a good chance of embarrassing himself with for lack of practice.

Before Alexios could decide on a course of action, Brasidas sat up. He wondered if he had broken the moment, but Brasidas just gave him a gentle push to sit.

“I have wanted to do this since I met you,” he said with a playful smile, lifting Alexios’ leather skirt as he urged his thighs apart.

Alexios lifted his hips for Brasidas to pull off his underwear. It did not surprise him that he was already stiff after a little kissing and petting; just looking at a man like Brasidas may have done it for him on a good day, and as Brasidas now leaned down his head between his legs and took him in his hand, Alexios grew fully hard in moments.

Without hesitation, Brasidas wrapped his lips around Alexios’ cock. One hand covered the base of him, as Alexios’ was big enough to give even an eager man or woman some trouble, the other still sat on the inside of his leg, almost imperative in its strength, keeping him pinned where Brasidas wanted him. The first movements of his head were slow and languid and obscenely wet as his tongue pressed against him, and with every downward thrust of his head he sucked him in deeper. Then, to Alexios’ surprise, he unfolded the first finger, then the second, allowing Alexios’ cock to slip against the soft back of his mouth. It was like a show, slow and deliberate, and Alexios’ heels dug deep into the earth as he stuttered a groan.

Brasidas halted at that edge, allowing the head of Alexios’ cock to push briefly into his throat with every downward stroke, but never fully in. Just when Alexios had reined in his breathing a little, figuring this was as deep as Brasidas could go, and gave himself to the rhythm, Brasidas lifted his hand and took him all the way in, his throat squeezing him hard.

“Fucking gods!” Alexios gasped.

The noiseless rumble coming from Brasidas’ chest may have been a laugh stifled by Alexios’ cock.

His hand flew to the back of Brasidas’ head just to give himself one more way to feel these small motions that rocked his entire body. It took him more self-control than any battle he’d ever been in to not fuck Brasidas’ mouth. When Alexios had seen him dip his head, he had figured he would be on stable ground, as many women had pleased him this way before. He couldn’t have guessed that a Spartan soldier would have talents that put many hetaerae too shame.

His fingers slid deep into his curls, taking hold of his braid. The plan was to pull him away when Alexios came because he figured words would escape him as his mouth seemed to want to form nothing but panting and groans. However, in the end, he could not even do that much. His peak came quick like a thunderbolt and he shot his seed down Brasidas’ throat. Brasidas did not back off or even sputter. He kept his firm hand on him, holding him down by the hip until he had swallowed it all down. When Alexios’ breath evened out, Brasidas straightened, fingers teasing Alexios’ oversensitive, soft cock. Alexios moaned.

“Mercy,” he said, laughing breathlessly. “You win this fight.”

“Already? I can do so much worse than that,” Brasidas said smiling.

“Apparently they really do teach you things at Sparta that I still have to learn.”

Alexios noted that Brasidas’ underwear was around his knees. With how good Brasidas was at dominating his focus, he hadn’t even noticed that his hand must have been around his own cock. Seeing his own come white on Brasidas’ lips was more than enough to push him to overcome his hesitance. He kissed him, tasting the salt, and grabbed his cock. He would not treat a man as well as Brasidas had, but he had pleasured himself often enough to guess how to do this.

Brasidas embraced him tightly, shamelessly rutting into Alexios’ hand, and Alexios sank back into the grass, pulling Brasidas on top of him. As he swirled his thumb across the head of his cock, he bit Brasidas’ lower lip, pulled it, playfully teased his tongue into his mouth. Brasidas came over Alexios’ fingers and his steel breastplate.

When Brasidas rolled off of him, Alexios took a deep breath. Night had fully fallen now and the moon and stars looked white as snow in a dark blue sky. Next to him, Brasidas sat up and in the cold blue light he was just as handsome as he had been in the flicker of flames.

“I have you to play with, the Monger is dead – it would be a perfect day if I could stretch out right here and sleep in the woods by your side.”

“Are you wanted somewhere else?”

Alexios knew that they probably would not have cuddled here through the night, anyway. They did not know each other, did not trust each other enough. In that moment, though, he liked the thought. Sitting up, he watched Brasidas pull up his underwear.

“Unfortunately. I still must report the success I had in Korinth thanks to the help of a talented _misthios_.” Brasidas placed his hand on Alexios’ knee. “But I expect to see you again now that you got an idea of what might wait for you in Sparta.”

Smiling, Alexios got to his feet.

“You make a compelling argument,” he said, drawing Brasidas closer by his arm.

They kissed again, and then again, and when Brasidas tried to step away, Alexios tightened his grip and that was all he needed to do to convince Brasidas to come closer. The kisses were slower but deeper than before, with the urgency of lust taken off, but Alexios knew it would only take one right move to have them on the ground again. Summoning his remaining self-control, he pushed Brasidas off of him.

“Go,” he said, slapping him on the arm, “otherwise your men will go looking for you and find out you have been abducted by a mercenary and been made to serve him.”

Brasidas chuckled. “This is the first time that I have considered getting captured. I guess I must leave now before you erode my Spartan values.”

Alexios sat back down in the grass as he watched Brasidas untie his horse from a branch. He jumped up on the mare’s back. Before he turned it towards the woods, however, he lifted his hand once more in a goodbye.

The forest swallowed the sounds of his horse’s steps quickly in the thick cover of leaves and suddenly Alexios was alone again with Phobos plucking at grass at the edge of the clearing and Ananke watching him from the shadows.

 _Fate_. Alexios wondered if that was what had thrown him into the arms of a Spartan soldier who knew his story and still thought that Alexios could fight his way back. Maybe it was just chance, though; and if people like the Cultists decided what humans should know of the gods’ will, that might be the better choice.

Whatever it was, he thought back on Brasidas’ smile and figured he had another reason not to fail.

-

Alexios had not gone out of his way to meet Brasidas again, but only in that he had never turned his ship into another wind for him. The two day’s ride south towards Thebes had not been planned, but when he heard people speak of General Brasidas marching at the head of Spartan troops, he had not spent another thought on whether he should go.

It did not mean he did not think about the decision, even as it had already been made. Brasidas was another promise, another prize for him to win. Even as he had experimented, dragging other men into bed through the months they had been parted, he found that none had given him that connection, that firelight spark. Yet just like his mother and sister and Sparta itself, he did not know if he deserved Brasidas while being a roving mercenary with nothing but a collection of loose ends to show for his efforts yet. Would Brasidas even want to see him or had he been a fleeting adventure on the road? And what was Brasidas to him? Alexios could not say, he only knew that when he’d held conversations with non-existent people in his mind in those last few months, on the long, empty stretches of road, he’d often imagined Brasidas to be riding next to him.

He would find out soon enough what Brasidas really thought of him. Sneaking into his camp at night had been less trouble than it should have been and the general’s tent was clearly marked in size and colour. He dodged the guards who wandered past it, chatting and inattentive, and slipped through the back of it.

Brasidas sat cross-legged on the ground studying a map. He was not in armour now, but he looked no less handsome with his hair and beard damp from a bath and wearing only a chiton. What impressed Alexios even more than the sight of him was the speed with which he reached for his sword before he’d even turned around to see Alexios.

“No worries, I have not come to kill you,” Alexios said, raising his hands, “though you may want to talk to your guards. I wasn’t even particularly careful.”

Alexios had imagined to see anything from confusion to disappointment on Brasidas’ face as his own frustration with his flagging quest had taken over his mind on the journey here. What really greeted him was wide-eyed surprise and, after that, a big smile. Brasidas stepped close and grasped him by the arms.

“Alexios! Leave it to you to make Spartan soldiers look like amateurs. How are you? How goes the search for your mother?”

A stone the size of Taygetos tumbled off Alexios’ heart as he gave Brasidas a crooked grin.

“Not as well as I hoped, though I have a few leads. I just thought – well, I heard you were close-by. Figured it couldn’t hurt to check in, now that I know you never sent assassins after me.”

Brasidas smiled and directed him to sit. “Of course not. Do you want wine? You must tell me all that happened to you. I’ve often wondered what you were doing now.”

“So have I. I didn’t expect to find you at the head of an army. I thought you were a spy?”

“I have many talents,” Brasidas joked as he brought a flask and a goblet.

“Oh, I remember.”

Brasidas laughed as he sat down next to him. “I’m happy to have left such an impression, but the first man always has an advantage when it comes to being remembered.”

Alexios, reaching out for the goblet, stopped and looked at him in confusion. “How do you know that?”

“I didn’t, but now I do,” he said, smirking. “I suspected it, though.”

Alexios snorted. “Was I that clumsy?”

“Just a little nervous. It was charming.” Brasidas cocked his head. “I was happy to have had that much with you, though I regretted that it was a little rushed, especially thinking I would only see you again in a few years.”

“It doesn’t bother you I’ve showed up without proof of my citizenship written on a scroll?” Alexios asked in a way he hoped sounded irreverent.

Brasidas shook his head, looking puzzled.

“Blood cannot be spoiled without foul deeds of one’s own and your only crime was trying to protect your sister, as a child, at that. To me, you always were Spartan. You only have to find the path back, but I will be happy to help any way I can.”

Alexios took a deep breath. Suddenly, all the troubles, all the doubts wanted to burst out of him, if only to hear Brasidas tell him that he was strong enough to overcome them.

“It all is much more complicated than you think,” he said.

Brasidas leaned into his side where they sat and elbowed him gently.

“Then tell me.”


End file.
